1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to athletic shoes and, more specifically, to a coating applied to the soles of athletic shoes for traction enhancement.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Specialized shoes have been designed and used in conjunction with many athletic activities, such as basketball, tennis, volleyball, etc. These shoes are designed not only to provide support to the player but to enhance the “cutability” performance of the shoes when a player is required to step “hard” on the shoes to stop quickly, pivot or reverse directions.
Indoor floor sport enthusiasts have one major complaint—dusty, dirty floor surfaces. Players use courts that range from slightly dusty to neglected for months. These conditions lead to a lack of traction at the most inopportune times, i.e., when turning suddenly or attempting to make fast cuts, initial accelerating steps and immediate stops.
Basketball and volleyball courts, for example, are hard surfaces that are generally maintained to provide very smooth surfaces. Such smooth hard surfaces when covered with dust tend to diminish the amount of traction that a shoe sole can provide, particularly when the bottom surface of the sole of the shoe becomes contaminated by collecting dust, fibers and other forms of debris. Such debris often sticks to the sole of a player's shoe and this diminishes and eventually leads to a significant reduction or loss of traction between the player's shoe sole and the floor surface. Such dust accumulates rather quickly in spite of all attempts to keep the floor dust free. Players often find it necessary to wipe the bottoms of their shoes quite frequently, with their hands or other devices in order to restore some of the original tackiness of their shoes.
A number of solutions for aforementioned problem have been proposed. U.S. Pat. No. 3,400,421, for example, discloses a shoe sole cleaner in a form of a “sticky” floor mat that incorporates a pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) to accumulate dirt from the bottom of shoes. Once the sticky surface has been fully contaminated and can no longer adequately serve its purpose a new layer is created by peeling the top pressure sensitive sheet in a stack of such sheets. Thus, such shoe sole cleaner utilizes a pressure sensitive adhesive surface that a user can walk on to clean the under surface of shoes thereby removing some of the debris and micro-debris that has been accumulated and attached to the shoe sole. This is not always practical when playing sports.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,106 discloses a shoe sole wiping pad that seeks to eliminate the problem encountered on the floors of basketball courts and the like where there is a constant accumulation of dust particles that attach to the bottoms of shoes of basketball players, for example, resulting in loss of traction during a game. The patent discloses an upwardly facing wiping surface of suede or other suitable material that can be used by players to remove dust from their shoe soles by wiping the shoe soles on the upwardly facing surface of a shoe string cover mounted in each instep of each shoe.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,555,564 an apparatus is disclosed for cleaning a shoe sole and a method of making and using the same. A shoe sole wiping pad is sewn into the outer surface of an athletic socks upper tube portion. The wiping pad absorbs and retains moisture and has a moisture-bearing wiping surface that removes dust and debris from the sole of an athletic shoe when the wearer wipes the sole across the pad.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,337,561 a shoe sole traction enhancement device is disclosed intended to enhance the traction between a sole of a shoe and a hard court athletic surface. The patent discloses a number of different devices that include an adhesive roll that can be applied to the bottom surface of the shoe sole. The rolling process encourages the transfer of the particles from portions of the sole to the adhesive role, with the expectation that enough dust and debris is removed from the shoe sole to at least slightly enhance the traction between the shoe sole and the athletic surface.
In the aforementioned patents the emphasis is to apply a device to the shoe sole surface so that either rubbing the device against the shoe sole or the shoe sole rubbing against the device removes dust and/or other debris from the bottom of the shoe in order to restore some of the tackiness of the shoe sole. The problem with the proposed devices is that removing debris from the bottom of the shoe sole offers little to no added traction, beyond that of a clean shoe and lasts for only a short period of time. The sole will continue to attract dust and other debris that will stick to the shoe sole. With extended pounding the debris at least partially penetrates the surface of the sole and becomes embedded or lodged in the sole so that it is difficult to remove by physically rubbing the surface.
There are several products on the market today that attempt to address the issue of shoe adhesion including PYTHON™ solvent spray for shoe outsoles, SNEAKER GRIP™ spray for restoring flexibility of rubber outsoles, CRAMMERS ROSIN™ powdered rosin, B SHARP™ shoe sole cleaner for improving traction, SNEAKER GRIP SPRAY™ spray for restoring flexibility of rubber outsoles. SHOE GRIP™ spray-on adhesive to prevent slips and falls on ice and slippery surfaces, and SLIPP NOTT™ rubber and plastic mats for removing dust and dirt from athletic shoes in order to enhance traction and they can be broadly divided into two classes. The first are shoe-cleaning products, such as B SHARP™ which, while effective at cleaning, do not provide any modification of the shoe's original or current grip. Further, they are very short lived as they do not address the conditions of the court and as soon as the player takes a few steps all of the benefits of cleaning are lost. Watching any court event including basketball, volleyball, table tennis, squash, or racquetball games, as well as, cheerleading competitions one will notice players repeatedly wiping the soles of their shoes with their hands throughout the game. The second type of product attempts to modify the adhesion properties of the sole. There are far fewer of this type of product and those that exist are not designed for indoor use. Perhaps the most well-known is SHOE GRIP™, a product designed for outdoor adhesion between boots and cold surfaces. It employs a low melting point, room-temperature liquid rosin acid which, upon loss of the water (which requires at least 10 minutes), leaves behind a very sticky liquid rosin product. This is completely unacceptable for indoor athletic use as it would mar the floor and leave a sticky residue everywhere.